Despite 38 Candidates running for the Sri Lankan Presidential election, the race will be ultimately decided between the major Sinhala-Buddhist candidates Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sajith Premada, Anura Dissanayake and Namal Rajapaksa. According to media predictions, it will be a close race between Ranil, Sajith and Anura. While all of these candidates have different support bases, not only inside of Sri Lanka but also from foreign actors, for the Tamil people in the North-East, every Sinhala-Buddhst candidate will mean a continuation of the Sri Lankan state’s denial of Tamil rights, such as accountability, justice and the call for self-determination of the Tamil homeland. Despite huge divisions among the Sinhala polity, all of the leading Sinhala-Buddhist candidates are united when it comes to protecting Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism. They have all vowed to protect the military and will continue to defend the Sri Lankan unitary state. Tamils know that they cannot democratically change a system that is fundamentally flawed by design. That is why the turnout from the Tamil homeland has always been amongst the lowest on the island since the first Presidential elections were held in 1982, a year before the anti-Tamil pogroms of Black July and the start of the armed conflict. To find a new path forward, Tamils need to collectively find a unified position to best represent the demands of the Tamil nation.
The original Pongu Tamil declaration (meaning ‘Tamil Uprising’) at the University of Jaffna.
Despite 38 Candidates running for the Sri Lankan Presidential election, the race will be ultimately decided between the major Sinhala-Buddhist candidates Ranil Wickremesinghe, Sajith Premada, Anura Dissanayake and Namal Rajapaksa. According to media predictions, it will be a close race between Ranil, Sajith and Anura. While all of these candidates have different support bases, not only inside of Sri Lanka but also from foreign actors, for the Tamil people in the North-East, every Sinhala-Buddhst candidate will mean a continuation of the Sri Lankan state’s denial of Tamil rights, such as accountability, justice and the call for self-determination of the Tamil homeland. Despite huge divisions among the Sinhala polity, all of the leading Sinhala-Buddhist candidates are united when it comes to protecting Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism. They have all vowed to protect the military and will continue to defend the Sri Lankan unitary state. Tamils know that they cannot democratically change a system that is fundamentally flawed by design. That is why the turnout from the Tamil homeland has always been amongst the lowest on the island since the first Presidential elections were held in 1982, a year before the anti-Tamil pogroms of Black July and the start of the armed conflict. To find a new path forward, Tamils need to collectively find a unified position to best represent the demands of the Tamil nation.
Past elections have shown, that Tamils usually had to vote for a lesser evil in a Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony, which in its design as a unitary state, leaves no room for Tamil aspirations or a systematic change. The 2019 election, for example, illustrated how Tamils voted for Sajith Premadasa to prevent a win for Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the architect of the 2009 genocide against the Tamils, amidst fears of increasing violence and suppression against Tamils. This fear became reality after Gotabaya’s Sinhala-majority-backed win in the last election, despite Tamils collectively voting against him.
But, ultimately, the “lesser evil” candidates are no better at acknowledging Tamil voter’s demands. Instead, they only repeat the same hollow promises towards the Tamils as their predecessors: development of the North-East, implementing devolution, and finding a path for “reconciliation” and “unity”. Recent and past examples demonstrate how none of the promises have been or will be implemented. On the contrary, Tamil leaders make concessions while their Sinhala counterparts break promises, either because they don’t want to endanger the Sinhala-Buddhist unitary state or due to pressure from the other Sinhala-Buddhist extremists or the opposition. Tamil demands will be put on hold until the next Sri Lankan crisis erupts and a new election will be held. The only time the Sri Lankan state was forced to adapt to Tamil demands was during the peak of the LTTE’s power, when a de-facto state of Tamil Eelam was established to achieve the long-standing demand of Tamils for self-determination. But since the brutal annihilation of the de-facto state in 2009 and the reinstallment of Sinhala-Buddhist hegemony over the whole island, no Tamil party or leader was able to negotiate or achieve anything close to Tamil self-determination or a structural change of the Sri Lankan unitary state.
Because this year’s election has multiple candidates, all of whom would continue the current policies towards them, Tamils have two alternative options to break out of the repeating cycle of broken promises: (1) They can either boycott the elections or (2) They can field a common Tamil nationalist candidate.
In a Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian country, only Tamils will either boycott the elections or vote for a Tamil nationalist candidate. Both options will lead to the same outcome. Despite being numerically smaller, this collective demonstration of unity and distrust of the Sri Lankan system will show, not only to the Sinhalese but to the international community, that Tamils are a separate and distinct Nation on this island and that they reject the unitary structure of the Sri Lankan state. This could bring Sinhalese leaders to the conclusion that they should fulfil Tamil demands to win the significant Tamil vote share. But history has repeatedly shown that Sinhalese leaders will always fall into the traps of irrational Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian anxieties, which means that all demands of Tamils must be denied to protect the unitary structure of the island and to appease the Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian sentiments in the South. Thus, a fulfilment of Tamil demands by a Sinhala-Buddhist government is still a fiction. Every Tamil knows that this will not happen. The only ones who still try to sell this option are some Tamil politicians who have lost touch with the problems and demands of their people in the North-East and still naively think that appeasement politics will give them respect and power in a Sinhala-Buddhist country.
Since Sinhala-Buddhist leaders will close their eyes to Tamil demands, more importantly, a collective Tamil position will give Tamils a better standing in the international arena: A unified Tamil political front, backed by the electorate of the Tamil North-East, will ultimately give Tamils better arguments and strength to advocate for Tamil demands, including accountability, justice and especially self-determination on the global stage. A unified Tamil position can also be seen as a continuation of Tamil collective calls for self-determination, such as the Vaddukoddai resolution or the Thimpu principles. Sri Lanka’s continuous crisis and instability are not only a danger to all people on the island but also to international actors, who always had to save Sri Lanka from crisis to crisis to protect “international order” and international economic stability. Tamils could present a viable and rational solution to the everlasting crisis, showing that the root problem of the Sinhala-Buddhist unitary state must be changed and how Tamil self-determination could bring peace and stability to the whole island.
To make that argument to the international community, both electoral options, a boycott and voting for a common Tamil candidate, could be used to demonstrate how Tamils reject the Sri Lankan state’s structure and that they have no say in this “democratic” farce. But to be most efficient and acknowledged as a nation, Tamils need to agree to support either one of these options. Only then, the Tamil nation can show that it is unified and determined to continue its struggle for liberation from the Sri Lankan unitary system.
Boycott the election or vote for the Tamil common candidate, which option is better suited for this goal?
For this, we have to take a look at the current Tamil political scene. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) already collapsed and was not able to be the unified Tamil representation that it intended to be in the beginning. The largest Tamil party, the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), has also been a debacle in recent weeks. Some of their party leaders claim that the party officially supports Sajith Premadasa, others have been advocating for the Tamil common candidate P. Ariyanenthiran, some have publicly defended Dissanayake, whilst a few have even backed incumbent Ranil Wickremesinghe. It is clear that the ITAK has lost its claim of being the representative of Tamil nationalist politics, and that many Tamils distrust the party members for many contradictory statements, the lack of leadership, the appeasement of the Sri Lankan government and especially for their chaotic internal quarrels and divisions.
Due to the huge distrust among the Tamil people against most current active Tamil political leaders, it would be smarter to boycott all Sri Lankan presidential elections, a position currently supported only by the Tamil National People’s Front (TNPF).
The moment a respected, trusted and unifying Tamil leadership comes up as a fresh change compared to the current flawed Tamil political class, the time will be ripe to file a common Tamil candidate to represent the Tamil nation to challenge the Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian state and to advocate for Tamil rights and negotiate a political solution in the international arena. While it is normal and important that Tamils have different political opinions and approaches, it is clear that there is also a need for a unified position to negotiate and advocate for the core Tamil political demands towards the international community.
While Tamil politicians might seem divided, the core demands of the Tamil people have been consistent since the independence of the Sinhala-Buddhist state: The rejection of the Sri Lankan unitary state and the demand for Tamil self-determination. Tamil political leaders must understand that Tamils expect them to defend these demands not only in the North-East during elections but also in the Sinhala South and when engaging with the international community. The past 76 years of living in the suppressive unitary state have shown that the Tamil nation’s negotiation power has been the strongest when they have been seen as a unified national entity.
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Sagi Thilipkumar is an advocacy officer for People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) and works as an asylum lawyer in Switzerland
